The most thrilling weekend of hurling that we can remember off the top of our head (the 2013 and 2014 seasons offered a fair few thrills) was decorated with any number of outstanding displays.
It's a mark of how competitive both games were that Man of the Match candidates were found as easily among the losing teams as the winners.
Sure enough, Austin Gleeson, awarded the Man of the Match by Sky Sports after the Kilkenny-Waterford replay, has won a whopping 62% of the vote in our player of the weekend poll.
Gleeson ruled the skies in Thurles to such an extent that Cody implored Eoin Murphy to keep the puckouts away from him. His decision-making let him down on occasion. After a couple of stunning, lung-bursting sallies, Gleeson attempted wild shots which tailed wide. It was as if he felt that laying the ball off wasn't a fitting enough crescendo. But still it was a spectacular, all-action display which will live long in the memory of those there.
Colin Fennelly, who blasted in two early goals, finished a distant second in our polls, mustering 18% of the vote. Fennelly is often targeted for criticism both in and outside Kilkenny, but he terrorised the Waterford full-back line all evening. Every time a low ball skidded into him, he looked like skinning Barry Coughlan.
Ensuring that players from losing teams gathered 75% of the vote this week was David Burke, who finished third in the poll. Burke has been in stunning form in 2016 and can't have been far from winning Man of the Match in the Galway-Clare quarter-final in Thurles. He was phenomenally busy on Sunday, winning a mountain of possession across the 70 minutes.
In what was a curious display for Tipp - they won the match yet most of their supporters were grumbling about the performance late on Sunday evening - James Barry stood out at full back. Galway lamped plenty of ball into the mixer in the second half but no goals were mined from this strategy.
